TroubleshootingForecast Looks Wrong

Forecast Looks Wrong

Diagnose unexpected demand forecasts or replenishment recommendations in Profit Hawk by working through the most common causes.

If a product's forecast or reorder recommendation does not look right, the cause is almost always one of a handful of inputs. This page is a structured way to find which one.

Start with the four common causes

In our experience, more than 90% of forecast issues come from one of these:

  1. Sales velocity is skewed by a recent stockout, promotion, or seasonality
  2. Lead time is set too high or too low
  3. Min/max days of stock does not match how lean or padded you actually run
  4. Missing or stale product cost is throwing off cost-related columns (the order quantity itself is fine)

Walk through each one in order before reaching out to support.

1. Check sales velocity

Click the product to open the detail drawer (or open the full product page with Ctrl/Cmd+click). The Sales Velocity table shows the calculated velocity for each timeframe (7, 14, 30, 60, 180, 365 days) and the weight applied to each.

Symptoms and fixes

2. Check lead time

Open the product page and review the lead time stages:

  • Production
  • Sea Freight or Air Freight (one or the other)
  • Customs
  • Ground
  • Prep

The total lead time at the bottom drives the Order By date.

Symptoms and fixes

3. Check min and max days of stock

Defaults are 30 (min) and 90 (max). If your business runs tighter or looser:

4. Check product costs

Cost issues do not break the order quantity but they make the Estimated Cost and Estimated Profit columns inaccurate.

If those columns look wrong, open Product Costs and confirm:

  • The product has at least one cost entry
  • The most recent cost has an effective date on or before today
  • The categories (manufacturing, shipping, prep, import) have realistic per-unit values

When the forecast itself is the problem

Sometimes the issue is not a setting but the underlying data. Check:

  • 18 months of history have synced. When you first connect Amazon, the historical import takes 12 to 24 hours. Until it finishes, forecasts only have partial history.
  • A new product with no history. Brand-new products have zero velocity and no forecast until sales come in. If you want recommendations sooner, manually set a Custom velocity profile with values you estimate based on similar products.
  • A pool was recently added. If you started selling in a new marketplace recently, that pool's history is shorter and the forecast is less confident there.

Refresh and verify

After making changes, click Refresh Forecasts on the Inventory Overview toolbar. Recomputes typically complete in 10 to 15 minutes. Refresh the page and confirm the new numbers reflect your changes.

Still wrong?

If you have walked through everything above and the forecast still looks off, send us:

  • The product name or SKU
  • A screenshot of the forecast or recommendation that looks wrong
  • A short description of what you expected and what you saw

Email [email protected] and we will dig in.